She was midway through a five-course Mexican feast at the Brooklyn Kitchen in Williamsburg last Saturday night, a meal engineered to introduce New Yorkers to the succulent wonders of edible insects. Throughout the first couple of courses (yucca frites dotted with mealworms, a smoked corn custard sprinkled with crispy moth larvae), Ms. Moorehead’s response had been muted. Earlier that evening, in fact, out on the sidewalk, she and her date, Harold Bradley, had considered fleeing the event altogether, even though they’d spent $85 each.

“We kept asking ourselves: ‘Are you ready? Do you want to turn back?’ ” Mr. Bradley said.

But they stayed, and at some point during dinner a bowl of squirming wax moth larvae was passed around. Ms. Moorehead, 38, who most days can be found driving the morning G train, dived in. “They’re moving,” she said. “Oh, I want to try that. Oh! Oh!”

Suddenly almost trembling with excitement, she stuck her fingers into the bowl, grabbed a pale yellow worm, popped it into her mouth and munched down. She closed her eyes. She seemed to swoon.

“I ain’t gonna do that,” Mr. Bradley said.

“Just try one, please,” Ms. Moorehead said.

“It tastes like raw corn,” a fellow diner, Alfredo Lamus, said from across the table.

“Just try it,” Ms. Moorehead said gently.

Mr. Bradley, a police officer, wedged one between his teeth, scrunched up his face, and flailed his arms around in what looked like a genuine spasm of repulsion.

But Ms. Moorehead, who has such a potent phobia about the animal kingdom that she refuses even to pet dogs and cats — well, after having ingested that worm, it was clear that she had crossed a threshold. She beamed like someone who had just walked barefoot over hot coals.

“I’m so glad I did it,” she said. “Because that’s why I came here. I overcame something. If I can do this, I can do anything.”

Phil Ross, the San Francisco-based chef and artist who put together this and other insect smorgasbords, said he sees that kind of reaction all the time.

“People barely need help over the hump,” he said. “As soon as they taste them and they realize that the flavor is actually really good, all the other stuff just goes out the window very fast, and a whole lot of other things start entering. Transgression of one taboo leads to all kinds of other possibilities.”

Mr. Ross is wiry and intense and comes across like a 44-year-old version of Ferris Bueller — if “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” had been directed by, say, David Lynch. (Mr. Ross describes himself as the kind of guy who “gets a pizza with cockroaches on it — intentionally.”) He raises many of the worms in his San Francisco apartment.

His girlfriend, the artist Monica Martinez, builds miniature Bauhaus-style cottages and apartment complexes, and the bugs live rent-free. (These whimsical structures are on display until Oct. 15 at the EyeLevel BQE exhibition space, right around the corner from the Brooklyn Kitchen.)

You really want to go green? Try this. “I have my month’s meat growing in my office,” Mr. Ross said. “It’s taking up almost no space, it’s organically raised, it’s as fresh as I want it to be and the waste from it is garden compost.”

Mr. Ross first brought a group of San Franciscans together to chow down on cooked insects a year ago, and he was surprised when the guests started buzzing around him for raw samples. “I was like, ‘O.K., go for it,’ ” he said. “And then that just led to this very weird erotism moment when people were practically hugging each other while eating these live insects.” The spirit of the moment overflowed, leading, in a few cases, to groping and kissing in a corner.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” he said.

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She was midway through a five-course Mexican feast at the Brooklyn Kitchen in Williamsburg last Saturday night, a meal engineered to introduce New Yorkers to the succulent wonders of edible insects. Throughout the first couple of courses (yucca frites dotted with mealworms, a smoked corn custard sprinkled with crispy moth larvae), Ms. Moorehead’s response had been muted. Earlier that evening, in fact, out on the sidewalk, she and her date, Harold Bradley, had considered fleeing the event altogether, even though they’d spent $85 each.

“We kept asking ourselves: ‘Are you ready? Do you want to turn back?’ ” Mr. Bradley said.

But they stayed, and at some point during dinner a bowl of squirming wax moth larvae was passed around. Ms. Moorehead, 38, who most days can be found driving the morning G train, dived in. “They’re moving,” she said. “Oh, I want to try that. Oh! Oh!”

Suddenly almost trembling with excitement, she stuck her fingers into the bowl, grabbed a pale yellow worm, popped it into her mouth and munched down. She closed her eyes. She seemed to swoon.

“I ain’t gonna do that,” Mr. Bradley said.

“Just try one, please,” Ms. Moorehead said.

“It tastes like raw corn,” a fellow diner, Alfredo Lamus, said from across the table.

“Just try it,” Ms. Moorehead said gently.

Mr. Bradley, a police officer, wedged one between his teeth, scrunched up his face, and flailed his arms around in what looked like a genuine spasm of repulsion.

But Ms. Moorehead, who has such a potent phobia about the animal kingdom that she refuses even to pet dogs and cats — well, after having ingested that worm, it was clear that she had crossed a threshold. She beamed like someone who had just walked barefoot over hot coals.

“I’m so glad I did it,” she said. “Because that’s why I came here. I overcame something. If I can do this, I can do anything.”

Phil Ross, the San Francisco-based chef and artist who put together this and other insect smorgasbords, said he sees that kind of reaction all the time.

“People barely need help over the hump,” he said. “As soon as they taste them and they realize that the flavor is actually really good, all the other stuff just goes out the window very fast, and a whole lot of other things start entering. Transgression of one taboo leads to all kinds of other possibilities.”

Mr. Ross is wiry and intense and comes across like a 44-year-old version of Ferris Bueller — if “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” had been directed by, say, David Lynch. (Mr. Ross describes himself as the kind of guy who “gets a pizza with cockroaches on it — intentionally.”) He raises many of the worms in his San Francisco apartment.

His girlfriend, the artist Monica Martinez, builds miniature Bauhaus-style cottages and apartment complexes, and the bugs live rent-free. (These whimsical structures are on display until Oct. 15 at the EyeLevel BQE exhibition space, right around the corner from the Brooklyn Kitchen.)

You really want to go green? Try this. “I have my month’s meat growing in my office,” Mr. Ross said. “It’s taking up almost no space, it’s organically raised, it’s as fresh as I want it to be and the waste from it is garden compost.”

Mr. Ross first brought a group of San Franciscans together to chow down on cooked insects a year ago, and he was surprised when the guests started buzzing around him for raw samples. “I was like, ‘O.K., go for it,’ ” he said. “And then that just led to this very weird erotism moment when people were practically hugging each other while eating these live insects.” The spirit of the moment overflowed, leading, in a few cases, to groping and kissing in a corner.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” he said.

View the original article here